The importance of building partnerships for Indonesia’s transport and logistics industry to work together to achieve its goals was a key point brought up by speakers during the panel discussions at the 2024 HERE Directions Jakarta.
Collaborative partnerships foster innovation, enhance operational efficiency and enable companies to offer more comprehensive solutions. Collaborative partnerships are a critical factor that will shape the success of their supply chain and in building smart and sustainable solutions for the future of smart cities.
Innovating beyond supply chain challenges
Participants at HERE Directions Jakarta’s first panel session Can Indonesia’s end-to-end supply chain innovate beyond challenges spoke about how they are using location intelligence to improve the efficiency of their supply chain and solve logistics challenges.
By working with partners within the ecosystem, the speakers were able to streamline their product development and gain access to a wider variety of tools – from data modelling to access to geospatial data.
The use of real time data, for example, has enabled Amazon Web Services (AWS), Schenker Logistics and Anteraja to get greater shipment visibility, reduce inventory levels, and optimise transport routes.
Globally, AWS already has a strategic collaboration with HERE Technologies’ to help organisations and their customers improve their supply chain visibility. This include bringing market advanced capabilities, in areas such as warehouse management, predictive ETA calculations, and CO2 fleet emission solutions for transportation and logistics companies.
“We are very religious about working with partners to help our customers meet their targets. Collaboration is core part of our DNA and vital for AWS to grow the business and deliver the best customer experience,” said Juan Hasang, Head of Solution Architecture for Enterprise Segment, AWS.
With Indonesia facing high traffic congestion, limited remote access and challenges in last mile delivery, Ajeng Nurul, Head of Land Transport, Schenker Logistics Indonesia said it was pivotal for a 3PL provider like Schenker to look outside and work with others to find solutions to problems.
“We know our own capabilities, but we can’t address the challenges by ourselves. We want to engage with a software expert who can help us overcome the infrastructure and logistical barriers we face by accelerating the use of technology,” said Ajeng.
Leveraging new technologies through collaboration was a similar goal for Indonesia tech start up Anteraja. To overcome limitations in the existing supply chain, Robert Julius, Assistant Vice-President, Anteraja, said the company intends to set up a logistics system or lab that is open for external partners to join. This logistics lab can only thrive, he said, if information is shared and close relationships can be built for industry players to come up with ideas and solve problems.
“We want to work with both technology or logistics providers to help develop new solutions, or to drive the industry towards greater innovation and standardisation – such as in setting guidelines in how we manage security to protect customer information,” said Julius.
Describing how HERE Technologies is working with partners, Kushal Rajveer, Head of Supply Chain for Asia Pacific, said the company is always listening, “We want to do more than just be a technology provider. We want to look at how we can enhance our partners’ and customers’ ecosystem.
“For example, we do workshops, where we try to understand what’s the day in the life of our partners. We look at their data, we churn it, we simulate it, talk about how to improve them and set KPIs, and then we pass it on to our partners. This is our blueprint for collaboration. We want to understand their business KPIs, the operational impact, and how by collaborating we can help them win in their markets.”
Industry needs to think big and work with one another
The topic of partnerships was a dominant theme during the second discussion panel Sustainable Urbanisation and the Role of Smart Mobility in Indonesia’s Future.
Like many countries, Indonesia has committed to address climate change and set a goal to reach net zero by 2060. This is especially important for the transport and logistics sector, which currently contributes up to one-third of Indonesia’s carbon pollution. The country has pledged to lower emissions from 2005 to 2030 by 40 per cent, and achieving this target requires embracing new technologies as well as not letting up in efforts by players in the industry to reduce their carbon footprint.
Bayu Yasa Wedha, Co-founder and CEO, Integrasia Utama, said many Indonesian companies are embarking on a nationwide 4.0 transformation effort to digitise their business. The tech provider has been using location technologies, IoT and machine learning to improve its route optimisation for more than 6,000 vehicles since its inception in 2006.
“The use of real time data has allowed us to make more timely and accurate predictions in our supply chain. The next step is greater use of IoT devices and more automation, but we cannot develop the technology by ourselves. It will be too costly to do it alone,” said Wedha.
A strong proponent of advanced mobile technologies is Telkomsel in Indonesia. The mobile carrier has to date set up more than 250,000 base stations built across Indonesia, serving more than 150 million customers and 120 million Internet users.
Diko Aldillah Patiwiri, the Telkomsel’s General Manager, Insight-as-a-Service, said the mobile carrier, since six years ago has launched MSight – part of the company’s Data Solutions business unit – that enables the utilisation of the telco’s big data to provide customer insights to a range of businesses.
Telkomsel is now able to get insights into demographic and psychographic profiles of consumers, their digital behaviour across different locations, and how often and how they use the company’s products and services. “To elevate data utilization to the next levels, we need to collaborate and share or combine with the first party data of others. Trust, privacy, and cost are also factors and that’s where the partnership ecosystem comes in. We also need to ensure every stakeholder in the ecosystem protects how data is managed and used,” said Patiwiri.
Both Wedha and Patiwiri said moving to a smart and sustainable business ecosystem requires overcoming challenges in areas such as the managing the complexities of the supply chain, coping with a skill/talent shortage, the lack of standarisation, governance and receiving better support from government regulation.
Key to partnerships
Sharing his advice with the panellists, John Ramieri, Vice-President of Global Partners, HERE Technologies, said achieving the sustainability goals requires players in the industry to think “bigger than themselves and partner with each other.”
“The key to partnership is bringing a diverse set of skills and knowledge and experiences to the table to help solve a particular problem or to bring forward a particular initiative. How can we build that ecosystem and take advantage of each other’s different skill sets to solve those problems and create a sustainable environment?”
Citing findings from past projects, Ramieri estimates that 50 per cent of a company’s cost typically comes from the last mile of delivery. Notably, 81 per cent of the end customer is always willing to pay extra for a guaranteed delivery time and 78 per cent will switch away from the retailer or company if the delivery is not on time. “We have to focus maniacally on that last mile and optimising that last mile to ensure deliveries are on time,” he said.
Another challenge, Ramieri said, is to make sure the data is always available and in the same language and formats that you need. “Sometimes you need a third party to help mitigate some of those challenges, to understand and surface what they are, and what role each player within that ecosystem plays in overcoming that challenge.”
“To reach these sustainability goals, the government plays an important role because it needs to pave the way through policies to ensure that all the players can execute in a fast and high velocity manner,” he said.